Dusk is falling as we descend into the Valley through a disfigured highway negotiating muddy troughs, looking for the signposts of the quake that had hit at 7.6 on the Richter scale: the carcasses of the vehicles that were caught unawares as the road beneath their moving tyres slid, the concrete structures of tin-roofed homes that were uprooted and thrown hundreds of ft down like rag dolls. But today, the stark landscape is bare and the Shamsbari only look like silhouettes of a mountain range that surrounds this valley. Unlike last year, the narrow strips are not packed with relief vehicles or agitated villagers, mourning their dead or desperately waiting for anything from food grains to blankets. On the surface Tangdhar looks calm and the circles of rocks around former tent sites, black craters dug in the earth for community kitchens and few mounds of pieces of abandoned rubble here and there are the only memory of the quake.
But as we scanned through the dozens of villages, quake and the pain inflicted by this calamity has become the only reality for thousands of the inhabitants of Tangdhar even as the government claims of a major rehabilitation project. Here is a brief reality check. Tangdhar had lost 273 villagers in the quake while 3,500 were injured. The government estimates revealed that 8,943 houses were completely destroyed besides 540 partially damaged homes. The government had recently claimed that 70 per cent of the reconstruction has already been completed, but here on the ground the reconstruction comprises of few houses and 1,545 plinths alone. Thus 70 per cent of the quake hit population is preparing to spend another winter in their temporary shelters.
Out of the 85 schools of Tangdhar valley where 7,000 students of the area would study, 80 were flattened in the quake. And a year after the devastating tremors, the schools still run in make shift tents and community halls as not a single school building has been reconstructed.
The condition of the Health Care is no different. The quake had destroyed every health centre in the valley, leaving just two Medical Aid Centre buildings intact. The government has not managed to even repair the damage done to the Sub District Hospital building and no health centre building has been reconstructed.
In fact, the story of 25 displaced families of Gundi Gujran village is perhaps the most pathetic who still wait for the promise of rehabilitation. They were asked to shift from their village by the government soon after the quake for safety reasons and put in a colony of one-room shelters built by non-governmental organisation on the Tangdhar-Teetwal road. ``We lost everything in the quake, our homes, our cattle, everything. We had hoped the government will rehabilitate us properly,’’ said Shabir Ahmad Khwaja, who lives in one of these shelters with his 5-member family. ``But they put us in these one-room shelters and everybody forgot us’’.
The only village, where the scars of the quake seem to have healed despite loss of 22 lives and a total destruction, is Teetwal on the banks of Neelam river that bisects Kashmir between India and Pakistan here. Soon after the devastation of the quake, Teetwal was adopted by the army. And today, this remote village has the facilities of a metropolis – a modern community centre, a state of art gymnasium, a well equipped primary health centre, a new building for school, latest Amphi theatre for entertainment, a public library and solar lights for the villagers who always starved for electricity. Then the one-kilometre stretch of road in the village has no parallel to any stretch across Tangdhar.
The army too had suffered major devastation to its infrastructure along this Line of Control, where hundreds of bunkers and buildings were destroyed in the quake. But today there is no trace of the destruction caused by the tremors as the troops have already reconstructed new buildings and bunkers. However, the only difference this time is the material and make: the army has now used concrete blocks instead of traditional mud and stone in their bunker structures.
As the morning sun shines over the distant snow-capped peaks across the Tangdhar valley, we start a treacherous journey to a village which has always suffered for being right on the faultline. For India, Chatkadiyan that is divided between India and Pakistan by a narrow gorge is an unwanted hamlet that lies too close to Pakistan; well beyond the army’s LoC fence. After the Tata Sumo scales up a 10-km serpentine stretch, pockmarked by thousands of ditches and troughs, we reach a dead end. Suddenly the path ends and we track another 2 kms of a track high up the mountain ridge, cross the army’s LoC barbed wire fence, walk another 500 metres down the hill to arrive in Chatkadiyan. Here each one of its 22 families had lost their homes to the tremors. And even after a year, the villagers are living in tents and tin shelters. In fact, they don’t complain because they don’t plan to reconstruct their homes. ``We don’t think we will ever be able to rebuild this village again. Our dreams of a home too died with the quake,’’ says Mohamamd Fareed (35), a carpenter. ``First we don’t have the resources. How can we reconstruct our homes with forty thousand rupees (government relief)? And then it is impossible to bring material for reconstruction to this village. We don’t even have water here anymore’’. The villagers here say that they know they live in no man’s land. ``When the shelling stopped, life had eased. Then nature turned our lives upside down. It’s our fate to live in this misery. It’s God’s wish,’’ the village numberdar Abdul Raheem says. In fact, the signs of quake’s destruction were visible across the LoC as well where the Pak army men watched us from the pigeon holes of their newly constructed stone bunkers. The sun is setting as the leaves of the walnut trees flutter by a pleasant evening breeze. ``Please remember us,’’ says Raheem as he bids good bye to us.
Mail the author at muzamiljaleel@yahoo.com/ muzamil.jaleel@expressindia.com
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